Bucks from beyond changed Staten Island woman's life

Staten Island Advance/Jan Somma-HammelState Sen. Diane Savino stands with Penny Martin from the Forever Young Senior Center in St George. Ms. Savino's office helped Ms. Martin find the proof that she was the beneficiary of an insurance policy left to her by a former boyfriend decades ago.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. --- When Penny Martin was 16, her older boyfriend whispered in her ear that he would always take care of her, and, to prove it, he had made her the beneficiary of his life insurance.

More than three decades later, that promise came true: Ms. Martin — a cook at Forever Young Senior Center, who spent much of last year commuting to the job from a homeless shelter in Manhattan — received a check for $10,000 from the state’s unclaimed funds.

“Every day now I wake up and say each day is a blessing,” said Ms. Martin, 47, flanked by state Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli and state Sen. Diane Savino (D-Staten Island/Brooklyn), during a press announcement yesterday at the New Brighton senior center, about the windfall she received two weeks ago.

“He’d be giving me the big thumbs-up,” she said of her former boyfriend, smiling. “He knew that I would do the right thing.”

New York has $10.5 billion in unclaimed funds going back to the early 1940s, and Staten Islanders have the right to about $39 million of that pool, which includes unclaimed insurance policies, lapsed bank accounts and other property.

“Every dime counts, whether it’s $10, $50, or if you have a few thousand dollars,” said DiNapoli, in respect of the accounts, most of which are in smaller amounts, though the largest is over $1 million. “It might not change your life, but it’s going to make your day.”

Ms. Martin’s life did indeed change with the discovery of the cash.

“The money came in good hands at a time when I really needed it,” she said, recalling the magical quality of the day she discovered it might be hers, and how, knowing it would arrive, kept her tethered to hope during some very dark times.

Moments before walking into work last November to find representatives from DiNapoli’s office at the senior center with a laptop, encouraging people to check and see if they might be entitled to unclaimed funds, Ms. Martin had just finished a conversation about her long-ago ex — a man who rarely crossed her mind, and with whom she had lost contact long before he died in 1985.

“I came in that day and I was like, ‘Wow, what a coincidence,’” she said. She punched her maiden name into the computer, and sure enough, there it was: $10,000.

A week later, she came home to find her basement apartment in Stapleton padlocked because it had been determined to be unsafe. Without money to secure a new place, she was forced into a homeless shelter on the Upper West Side.

For months, Ms. Martin arose in the dark and left the building — “the worst place of my life,” she said — at 4:30 a.m. to catch a bus to the train to the ferry, so she could arrive at work by 7 a.m.

“There wasn’t a day that go by that I didn’t think, ‘It’s coming, it’s coming,” Ms. Martin said of the money.

But her claim was not so easy. She needed to prove a connection to the cash and only remembered the man’s name, his former address and where he had worked. With help from Sen. Savino’s office, she searched for and found the needed proof.

“I called them every day and they always answered; they were never nasty no matter how many times I called,” said Ms. Martin, giving a squeeze to Amoy Barnes, Sen. Savino’s director of constituent services, and adding: “She became like a friend to me.”

When the check finally arrived two weeks ago, Ms. Martin had finally been able to move into an apartment in West Brighton, but it’s virtually bare, because she could not afford furniture.

“I ran to the bank down the block and asked if they could cash it,” she said. Then she paid off her debts so she could get herself an account.

“During these difficult economic times, everyone could use a little bit of help,” said Sen. Savino. “Fortunately, the comptroller’s office has made it easy for New Yorkers to find out if the state owes you money.”

New Yorkers and others may check for unclaimed funds at www.osc.ny.us or by calling toll free at 1-800-221-9311.